The HP Photosmart E317 does okay for an entrance level digital camera, its biggest drawback is its battery limitations, approximately 20 or so pics (with flash), an extra set of them will be handy (2 AA's). Also the camera will not use the USB's power when it is connected to the pc to keep from draining the batteries during download. Along these lines it also has no external power, basically it is all battery dependant. To offset this however it does have a 1 GB SD Card which you can use to download into a pc directly without having to rely on its battery resources. Overall it's a pretty good camera. I'd give it around a 7 on a scale from 1 to 10 for its type.